


This is How the Story Goes

by orphan_account



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Forgiveness, Friendship, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A girl and a boy are watching fireworks on the Han River. That is how the story starts.</p><p>That is not how the story starts, not really. And he is not exactly a boy, and she is not exactly a girl. (Like all good stories, this one is true, and it is also not true.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is How the Story Goes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).



A girl and a boy are watching fireworks on the Han River. The water shimmers a rainbow as it reflects the magnalium stars that spark, bright and ephemeral, across the May night sky. That is how the story starts.

That is not how the story starts, not really. And he is not exactly a boy, and she is not exactly a girl. (Like all good stories, this one is true, and it is also not true.) But if he asks her to tell him a story tonight, that is how she will start.

There was a time, not so far away that she has forgotten but long enough ago that she has a smile for him now, when she told him a story every night. It was like _Arabian Nights_ except the nights had been Vietnamese and there had not been one thousand and one of them, and the stories were not told by the captive but by the captor.

She still remembers the first night, the one she took him prisoner, although she is still not clear exactly how it happened; but that is often the way of things, and not just in war. She had felt uneasy at his capture, an uneasiness that grew into a suspicion that he knew something she did not, a suspicion that grew into a strange notion that he had let himself be taken. She could not fathom why he would do such a thing, but the strangeness persisted. When she told Ivan, he had smiled in that way no one but he himself is meant to understand and asked what reason Alfred had given. 

"He has given none."

This revelation had cracked Ivan's smile, but only for a moment: the curl returned to his mouth as he said, "Perhaps he himself doesn't know."

She had regarded Ivan's smile before asking what she should do with Alfred. The smile didn't waver this time as he said only she could make that decision. 

So she decided to tell Alfred stories. He always was fond of stories.

She told him three stories. The first was about a colony who fought for independence, and won, and changed the world. The second was about a country that tore itself apart and strove to become whole again. Those stories were about him, and they were about her. 

The third story was three words. It was more than those words, and those words were all there was. The third story was accompanied by illustrations painted on the canvas of her lands and her people. She would watch him while he looked at the ruins of vegetation and nightmares of flesh, and she would tell him the story: "You chose this." 

The first two stories she told him only once. The third story had more than one telling, less than a thousand and one. She told him the third story day after day, night after night, even though he did not ask her to. It was a good story, both true and not at the same time. The story captured Alfred, held him captive as much as the tightly-bound ropes, and maybe even more so. 

She told him these stories in the hopes it would make him think about himself and the world, and how he has met it, and how he might. She succeeded, and she did not. She knows he still thinks about the third story—he cannot stop thinking about it, telling himself and the world (but mostly himself) stories about it. Sometimes his stories are closer to what she recognizes as truths and sometimes they are farther away. But he is still thinking about them.

He is thinking about them right now: "You didn't have to let me go," he says as a series of pyrotechnic chrysanthemums shoots upwards.

She does not agree but she does not say so. "You would have done the same." She looks at him to see what he thinks of that. He is thinking hard.

The chrysanthemums blossom brilliantly, green and gold and indigo. "I don't know if I would have then," he says, watching the fading trail of sparks. 

"Would you now?"

Another shell goes up, scattering peonies and chrysanthemums and palms across the sky. She doesn't know if he has heard her over the whistles and gunshot-reports of the pyrotechnic bouquet, over his own thoughts. 

A silver time-rain glitters in the sky, outshining distant constellations, falling over the river and the land and the people, absorbed into the night's ink before touching down.

She is pleased he accepted her invitation to the competition. She enjoys his visits, and hopes he does as well, and turns to tell him so—but he, without turning, speaks before she does. "I've made so many mistakes." He is gazing up, not just at the dense burst of kamuro but, she imagines, at the cosmic stars beyond. "I'm... I don't think I'm the hero..." He doesn't continue his sentence. Or maybe he has reached the end. 

She knows he is talking to himself. But she has an answer for him and so she offers it: "Just because you are not a hero now, that does not mean you cannot become one." He doesn't deny it but he doesn't accept it, either. 

He is still not looking at her and she is not sure whether or not he is listening (it is often difficult to determine if he is listening, even when he looks you in the eye and nods and smiles; especially then). But she goes on now for the same reasons she told him stories then: she has come to understand that his desire to be the hero is a compulsion, something he can no more curtail than he can willfully stop being a nation. In that case, it is better for him to strive upwards (for if a superhero falls, is there not the dangerous possibility that he will become a supervillain?), and to do so as thoughtfully as possible.

So, even though she cannot be certain and can only hope that he is listening, she says, "Are superheroes always born so in your stories? Don't you have stories of those who _become_ heroes? In their hearts and in their deeds—in the choices they make?" She knows this is how his stories sometimes go, and reminds him now of one he's told and retold the world recently: "Some men are Steve Rogers, and others—"

"Are Tony Stark," he says before she can. He looks over at her now, the slant of his mouth unfurling into a cocked half-grin. "I could be Tony Stark."

As if they are in one of his stories—and perhaps they are—the team from the United States begins their performance. The sky is filled with red and white and blue, yes; and also with red and gold; and also with other colors, violet and orange and green and indigo completing the indiscriminate rainbow. 

It is beautiful and when he turns to her this time, she thinks he is going to boast about how he is sure to win the competition (she thinks he is not wrong but she resolves not to confirm it just yet). 

What he says, though, is this: "Do you think we're living in the end times? I don't mean in a religious sense," he hastens to explain, "but in the sense of the world irrevocably changing?"

She doesn't answer and he doesn't seem to expect her to. He resumes his skyward gaze and she does, too.

Then he says, "Do you know what Yao told me? He said we're always living at the end of the world." He pushes at the nose piece of his glasses with one finger. "Do you think that's true?" 

Their gazes meet. She sees in his eyes that this time he does want an answer, so she gives him one: "If we are always living at the end, then we are also always living at the beginning." It is the kind of thing you hear, living near Yao for so long. Alfred does not live near Yao, though, so she adds for him, "New things begin as old things are ending. They are concurrent, not consecutive." She looks at him to see if he understands. 

His mouth quirks, a not-quite-smile folding in on itself. She has seen him do this before; she did not know what it meant then and she does not know now, but he nods, and she does too.

A girl and a boy are watching fireworks on the Han River. That is how the story ends, at least for tonight.

Yes, this is how the story goes.

**Author's Note:**

> In May 2013, the United States participated for the first time in the Danang International Fireworks Competition, which helped inspire this. (Vietnam's instinct here was right on the mark: the U.S. team took first place.)
> 
> _"One he has told recently"_ : refers to Marvel/Paramount's Avengers films. For those not into The Avengers, _Steve Rogers_ is Captain America and _Tony Stark_ is Iron Man.
> 
> A note on Vietnam's observation that America is more obsessed with the Vietnam War than she is: a friend of mine traveled throughout Southeast Asia a few years ago and said the Vietnamese were among the friendliest and most welcoming people she met. At one point she attempted to apologize for the war to some older women, who laughed and waved her off, saying they weren't concerned about that anymore--and that my friend should try to get over it, too. That may not be a universally held attitude in Vietnam, but it did inform my take on the character here.


End file.
